Wednesday, January 9th 2019

AMD Announces the Radeon VII Graphics Card: Beats GeForce RTX 2080

AMD today announced the Radeon VII (Radeon Seven) graphics card, implementing the world's first GPU built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication process. Based on the 7 nm "Vega 20" silicon with 60 compute units (3,840 stream processors), and a 4096-bit HBM2 memory interface, the chip leverages 7 nm to dial up engine clock speeds to unprecedented levels (above 1.80 GHz possibly). CEO Lisa Su states that the Radeon VII performs competitively with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. The card features a gamer-friendly triple-fan cooling solution with a design focus on low noise. AMD is using 16 GB of 4096-bit HBM2 memory. Available from February 7th, the Radeon VII will be priced at USD $699.

Update: We went hands on with the Radeon VII card at CES.
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157 Comments on AMD Announces the Radeon VII Graphics Card: Beats GeForce RTX 2080

#51
efikkan
bugTuring (and pricing) have been known since September. AMD had plenty of time to plan this ;)

That doesn't make you wrong an the Navi front though. I mean, AMD has announced their plans for CPUs till Q2 or Q3. If they said nothing about GPUs, it's likely nothing is planned.
Sure.
My point is that if they had Navi 10 ready now or very soon, they wouldn't have done this. My assumption is that Navi 10 would be a little faster and much cheaper to produce (less fp64 and possibly GDDR6), and therefore conclude that it's not coming soon.
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#52
Renald
These cards aren't supposed to out at H2 ?
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#53
erocker
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RenaldThese cards aren't supposed to out at H2 ?
Navi is. This is a die shrunk Vega.
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#54
ShurikN
erockerNavi is. This is a die shrunk Vega.
we dont know when and in what config Navi is coming
Which was probably the biggest disappointment from this key note. Lack of Navi info.
A shrunken Vega is cool and all, but it's still a Vega, uArch not designed for gaming at all. The numbers AMD pulled with VII are trough pure brute force of the chip. Which can only get them so far.
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#55
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
RenaldThese cards aren't supposed to out at H2 ?
You can buy one of these on 7th Feb.
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#56
TheOne
2080 equivalent with the same MSRP, cant say I didn't see this coming, I'm not looking forward to seeing Ryzen's pricing.
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#57
cucker tarlson
nice!
16gb hbm2 at 2080 price,no rtx though.I'd be in a pickle trying to choose,and that says a lot of good about the amd's card.
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#58
M2B
I don't think it's gonna beat the 1080Ti, look at the specs, 3840 Shaders at 1.8GHz translates into 13.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance which is 10% higher than Vega 64 and that doesn't necessarily mean 10% of Real-World performance increase.
But considering the huge memory bandwidth increase I think it will end up being 15-18% faster than Vega 64 at 4K which is not enough to beat a 1080Ti.
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#59
hat
Enthusiast
cucker tarlsonnice!
16gb hbm2 at 2080 price,no rtx though.I'd be in a pickle trying to choose,and that says a lot of good about the amd's card.
Might be a bit too early to say that. It might not be "RTX", but isn't ray tracing supposed to be a standard option with DX12?
M2BI don't think it's gonna beat the 1080Ti, look at the specs, 3840 Shaders at 1.8GHz translates into 13.8 TFLOPS of FP32 performance which is 10% higher than Vega 64 and that doesn't necessarily mean 10% percent of Real-World performance increase.
But considering the huge memory bandwidth increase I think it will be end up being 15-18% faster than Vega 64 at 4K which is not enough to beat a 1080Ti.
I believe I've read comments theorizing that Vega was starved for memory bandwidth. More memory bandwidth might well mean more performance. As far as I know, nVidia has some kind of hacky compression that helps cards with lower bandwidth perform better, but AMD doesn't.
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#60
Vayra86
If they can compete with a 2080 at a lower price, I can only say its a win - a small one, but a win nonetheless.

You have to keep in mind that AMD is doing this with minimal R&D expenses, versus Nvidia that is blowing millions on Turing. A shrink here, a little tweak there, and they can stall for another year. This already looks a lot better than Vega did at the time. A timely release schedule, a simple - open! - air cooler that is supposed to be silent, and a healthy + zippy VRAM department. The only caveat is the power consumption - we think.
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#61
FordGT90Concept
"I go fast!1!11!1!"
btarunrThis is steaming hot out of my ass, but Radeon VII could trigger an RTX 2090 and RTX 2090 Ti (full TU104 and full TU102 with 12 GB). AMD is probably saving the 64 CU ASIC for that. Right now it can compete and harvest just fine with 60 CU.
4 CUs aren't going to make much of a difference in performance though (6.7% at best). If they had an 80-96 CU waiting in the wings, then sure.
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#62
M2B
hatI believe I've read comments theorizing that Vega was starved for memory bandwidth. More memory bandwidth might well mean more performance. As far as I know, nVidia has some kind of hacky compression that helps cards with lower bandwidth perform better, but AMD doesn't.
I still think that's not enough to beat a 1080Ti. We'll see.
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#63
Nephilim666
Let's hope Navi is a clever and efficient chip with all the tricks nvidia uses to get more performance out of a technically inferior chip. Don't care about raytracing yet.

For now I'll just add another radiator to my loop and push my Vega 64 to 1750/1050. I have solar power so watts aren't a big issue.
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#64
SN2716057
Oh very exiting...but I'll wait for the reviews.
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#65
erocker
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ShurikNwe dont know when and in what config Navi is coming
Which was probably the biggest disappointment from this key note. Lack of Navi info.
A shrunken Vega is cool and all, but it's still a Vega, uArch not designed for gaming at all. The numbers AMD pulled with VII are trough pure brute force of the chip. Which can only get them so far.
This is clearly a stop-gap GPU. Nobody really expected anything from AMD in regards to Graphics until the end of the year. There will be Navi info once they're done trying to sell whatever the hell this is. This card is DOA at its price... low effort.
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#66
Rahmat Sofyan
unikinIt looks like they basically took AMD Radeon Instinct MI50 add active cooling and increase core/memory frequencies. That's it.

Great value for video content creators and computing, not so great for gaming. It's FP64 performance 6.7 TFLOPs is on pair with Titan V (costing $3K). This is not a true gaming card.

If true power draw will be around 300W. Vega 64 deja vu all over again :(
it's look like almost 100% same like MI50, so maybe yes Vega VII indeed a MI50 with display output and added fan ..

not really excited about RTG progress so far, but still I'm happy with my RX570 .

Maybe RTG tend to give up on high end GPU with nvidia in term of power efficiency right now, until they change masively entire structure.

lets hope Navi can bring major changes..

Ryzen still made a really good progress and I bet what weve seen on the demo was a Ryzen 5 vs i9 9900K or at least not the greatest next Ryzen..
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#67
xkm1948
btarunrThis is steaming hot out of my ass, but Radeon VII could trigger an RTX 2090 and RTX 2090 Ti (full TU104 and full TU102 with 12 GB). AMD is probably saving the 64 CU ASIC for that. Right now it can compete and harvest just fine with 60 CU.
A more logical explanation maybe the yield issues of 7nm. 7nm is VERY new and there may simply not be enough working full GPU dies for a 64CU.

Also Radeon 7 is still GCN. Judging by the gap between Vega56 and 64, 4CU would only bring abysmal performance improvement.

Don’t hype AMD, they don’t need hype.
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#68
Fluffmeister
Indeed, with the apparently awful overpriced 2060 giving their top consumer part a bloody nose, AMD had to show something.
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#69
efikkan
Just like the RX 590, this seems very much like a "backup plan", and kind of similar to Intel's Coffee Lake refresh.
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#70
Xzibit
$699 with 3 bundled unreleased games ?
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#71
ColdPlay
wow, if this is real and at that price, its a winwin for everyone of us :-)
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#72
jallenlabs
Ooh. A "gamer friendly" triple fan cooler design! Lol.
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#73
MrGenius
jallenlabsOoh. A "gamer friendly" triple fan cooler design! Lol.
It ain't by much. But, giving credit where credit is due, that is another aspect where it has the 2080 FE beat too. ;)
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#74
15th Warlock
It has about the same performance as the 2080, matching its price, with no ray tracing support?

I was hoping AMD would bring about a real threat to Nvidia's inflated prices, it's not the case...

I know this is because of the amount of HBM on this card, but they have a new Fab process, which means they can carve more GPUs out of the silicon wafer, and yet they chose to keep the CU count smaller (or equal in a future XT version?) than Vega 64, when they could've increased sheer rasterizing performance by taking advantage of the smaller node, while beating 2080 to a pulp and matching or surpassing the 2080 Ti? I mean, I get they're not beting on ray tracing, that's reasonable, but why not push the rasterizing envelope then?

Idk, same performance at same price, more memory, less features... It's gonna be an uphill battle.

An ideal scenario in my opinion would've been: Vega VII, with 50% more CUs due to ability to cram more transistors in a smaller space, and a lower price than 2080 by matching its 8GB buffer, now that would've made Nvidia shit their pants...

Idk, maybe next year
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#75
Xzibit
15th WarlockIt has about the same performance as the 2080, matching it's price, with no ray tracing support?

I was hoping AMD would bring about a real threat to Nvidia's inflated prices, it's not the case...

I know this is because of the amount of HBM on this card, but they have a new Fab process, which means they can carve more GPUs out of the silicon wafer, and yet they chose to keep the CU count smaller (or equal in a future XT version?) than Vega 64, when they could've increased sheer rasterizing performance by taking advantage of the smaller node, while beating 2080 to a pulp and matching or surpassing the 2080 Ti? I mean, I get they're not beting on ray tracing, that's reasonable, but why not push the rasterizing envelope then?

Idk, same performance at same price, more memory, less features... It's gonna be an uphill battle.

An ideal scenario in my opinion would've been: Vega VII, with 50 more CUs due to ability to cram more transistors in a smaller space, and a lower price than 2080 by matching its 8GB buffer, now that would've made Nvidia shit their pants...

Idk, maybe next year
Doesn't it have x2 more ROPs then before.

Very little investment to Vega with the die Shrink to be competitive. They don't have to invest 10yrs+ like the competition for around 20% uplift. If you look at both camps arc they been using prosumer arcs and just tweaking it along the way.
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